The Ba — Soul / Personality
A human-headed bird that flies out of the tomb by day and home to the body by night.
Also: ba · bꜣ · soul · ba-bird · personality · human-headed bird
Among the parts of a person, Egyptians counted the ba: roughly, the unique personality and capacity for movement, especially after death. It was pictured as a bird with a human head, able to fly out of the tomb by day, visit the living world and the sun, and return to the body at night. The ba kept the dead person mobile and present in the world.
In short
A principal component of the person — the ba, the individual's mobility and personality after death, often depicted as a human-headed bird able to leave the tomb and move between worlds.
Where it’s found
Pyramid Texts; Coffin Texts; Book of the Dead; the Middle Kingdom 'Dispute Between a Man and His Ba'
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
Attested from the Old Kingdom and elaborated in the Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead; the famous 'Dispute Between a Man and His Ba' (Middle Kingdom) explores the relationship between a person and his ba.
Translating ba as 'soul' is a convenient shorthand only; the ba is one of several distinct components.